End of Daylight Savings Time – Increase Your Safety
November, 2016
In 1961, my wife was in a white VW Beetle. She stalled coming out of a shopping center at night and was struck on the driver side by a car coming over a hill. The driver swerved to the right and struck the VW just behind the driver side door. Luckily, my wife was not physically injured but she was badly shaken. I had picked white as the color because it would be cooler (no air conditioning). I was not thinking safety back then.
During all my years working on safety I could not get NHTSA to do analyses on fatality rates by car color. Only after I left NHTSA did researchers in Australia do such research and found that white cars were 10% safer. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog/blog-enddstincreasesafety/
In 2015, I was pleased to learn that white had become the most popular car color on the planet. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/consumersbuyingmorewhitecarsandgreatersafety/
For the year 2015, no one can be pleased to learn that NHTSA recorded: * The Nation saw 2,348 more fatalities from motor vehicle crashes in 2015 than in 2014—a 7.2-percent increase. For pedestrians and cyclists color is also important for safety.
